1. Field of the Invention
The field of the invention relates to computer systems and computer networks, and more particularly, to systems, and methods for processing network traffic data.
2. Background
A gateway between a user and a server performs many important functions. One important function is policy enforcement. Policy enforcement performed by a gateway product may include, for examples, source verification, destination verification, user authentication, anti-virus, content scanning, content detection, and intrusion detection.
Generally, existing gateway products receive a request for policy enforcement sent by a sender, perform policy enforcement, and then transmit the request to a receiver. In response to the sender's request, the receiver sends a reply back to the gateway, which then performs further policy enforcement. After performing this second policy enforcement, the gateway passes the reply to the user.
Some of the existing gateway products use multiple processors to process packets transmitted between sender and receiver, thereby increasing an efficiency of the gateway products. However, in these gateway products, a tremendous amount of resources is utilized in managing flow of network traffic data that are being processed by the multiple processors. For example, a gateway product may prescribe complex protocols in distributing network traffic data among the processors. These protocols may require a lot of memory and processing time to process, and may render the gateway product unstable. In particular, a protocol may need to do backlog for traffic distribution, which uses a lot of memory. If this is not properly implemented, it may cause memory leak and corruption, which in turn, causes the system to be unstable. For example, if memory is run out, the protocol may either stop distributing traffic or may free previous backlog entry. This may cause service distribution as some traffic are cut.